Tuesday, July 15, 2008

First Steps Into Socialism...

And we thought it would be health care...but it's mortgages:

"In a country that holds itself up as a citadel of free enterprise, Washington has morphed from being the lender of last resort into effectively the only resort for home loans for millions of Americans engaged in the largest transactions of their lives.

Before, the government's more modest mission was to make more loans available at lower rates. Now it is to make sure the loans that matter most to middle class Americans are made at all.

The new reality is scorned by libertarians and conservatives, who fear intrusions by the state in the market, and by populists and progressives, who rue a society in which education and housing increasingly rest upon the government's willingness to finance it.

"If you're a socialist, you should be happy," said Michael Lind, a fellow at the New America Foundation, a research institute in Washington. "But you should really wonder whether you want people's ability to pay for housing and college dependent on the motives of people in Washington." (Read the entire article)

One thing I've never understood (besides people looking to strangers to bail them out from under their own poor decisions) is how there can be a such thing as a bad housing market. If the houses are selling for more than they're worth -that's good for the sellers. And if they're selling for their real value --that's good for the buyers. Unlike many markets, with housing either way someone wins...